Month: December 2015

So after much needed break, I’m now trying to get back into the work mind set and concentrate on getting this essay/comic done.

What Essay/comic some of you might ask? An essay/comic that I may or may have not been putting off since the beginning of the course, kind of. This ‘assignment’ requires us to create a short 4 page, 800 word manga/comic talking the rise and demise of or chosen animator(s) from the early 1900’s (in my case Fleischer Studios) whilst talking about their visual style. A simple task but one I’m struggling with because I can’t find a way to start the damn thing.

With that a side I should probably stat putting up blog posts about research I’ve done, so far it’s all text research about the studios founders Max and Dave Fleischer, what they’ve done and what happened to them in the end.

I’ve seen a couple of their animations during class as well as my own spare time like the ‘Superman Series’ and some of the animations featuring Koko the clown and the gang, so I have some stuff to refer to in the write up.

I plan to dissect write up part to make it easier on my self. 4 paragraphs, 200 per paragraph, 1 paragraph per page.

After finishing the animation I can positively say that I have created this animation following the brief that I was given. I have clearly demonstrated what my character’s objective is as well as the obstacle that he is trying to overcome.

The character is weak in some areas like the detail of the body and his head, but still fits well with the animations story. The background of the animation is weak, with very little detail to it, could do with some items and household objects to fill in the blank space.

The movement of the character and the cable is the strongest elements within this animation, despite that the animation had to be reduce to a 75% speed reduction to match the 30 second mark, they look very life like.

The editing has been done very well, the music and sound effects match and link up perfectly to the movement of the drawings, and the music doesn’t drown the other sounds, although some of the sound effects sound a bit muffled due to my poor planning to what sounds I actually wanted for the animation. I think next time will have to make sure to plan what sounds I want.

Overall a really good piece of animation. If I were to do it again I would add more detail to background of animation maybe add more framed pictures to the wall or possibly a household animal. I would also make sure to plan what sounds I wanted for the animation as well maybe adding some voice acting within the animation as well. And would try and add experiment with some of the features that Premier has to offer, it was my first time using it and I would like to see what I can add to editing with a little time and practice.

So after I completed animating I headed over to the sound booths to record some sound effects. The process was kind of fun although I didn’t really think about what sounds I actually needed and how I was going to do them so they’re all just improvised sounds, plus I hit my chin on the floor when I was recording the fall which kind of hurt.

With the animating and sound effects done, the only thing left to do now is editing. I exported the images put them in Premier Pro and created to sequence with them, only to find out that the whole sequences lasts for about 15 seconds. The reason for this is because I animated the whole sequence within 24fps when I should of animated in 12fps and because of this, the 360 frames that I did only totalled up to around 15 seconds which was not what I wanted. I did try and solve this by doubling each frame within TV paint and see if it would work then, but it only ended making the animation slow.

So ultimately I loaded the original 15 second sequence and decreased the speed duration of the frames by 50% which extended the sequence to about 28 seconds which was beneficial for me, but it still made the animation look slow. On top of that some of the sound effects sound a little muffled because I had to slow some of them down to match the speed of the animation, but on the bright side the SFX are on point with the animation so that’s cool.

I’m going to speak to Andy tomorrow about my problems and see if there is a way to fix them. If there isn’t then I’ll have to use what I got and submit it.

After hours of concentration, frames and Foo Fighters Kings of Leon and Darkness blasting in my ears, I’ve finally finished the animating and drawing. I’m quite impressed with myself, yeah it may not look like the best looking animation out of the class, but as my first piece of 2D animation I think I’ve out did myself.

Although all the drawing is done, I’m not done yet. I’ve still got to record sound effects as well as editing video, so I’ve still go work to get done, I’m going to start by getting the images ready for editing first and getting them in the correct sequence order. After this I’ll get my sounds recorded, I only need a handful of sounds so this process should be quick and once that’s done I can whack them all together and get it ready for submission.

We’re at 186 frames now and it’s going great so far. I’m pleased with how the animation is coming out, the characters movements look very good and the way cable snatches on the characters head looks great.

Although I’m doing well I’ve still got half of the animation to do, plus the editing and sound work as well, which daunting but I’m not too worried. I expect to be nearly finished with the drawing tomorrow which will leave me Wednesday, Thursday and/or Friday to do the sound effects, which shouldn’t take too long, but I want to get everything finished or near completion by Friday so I can beginning putting it all together.

So far so good I’ve managed to animate roughly 100 frames so I’ve made some good progress.

It’s been a bit of a challenging task so far because I’ve never made a 2D animation before and because I’m new to TV paint it’s taking me a lot longer to animate than others in my class, but I’m still enjoying never the less. It’s improving both my drawing and animating skills as well as my knowledge of TV Paint.

I’ve found that the most useful tool within the program is the warp tool, mostly because it saves me time on moving the character about without having to erase or re-draw him, it’s really useful.

So today I manage to get some feedback on both of the ideas during my tutorial. The feedback most helpful as it gave me an idea of which animation idea was better. The stronger idea was #2 with my character Tom Vance being connected to a television plug (outline of Idea #2 here), which Andy backed up on saying it had more meaning to why he is connected to the wire.

The only thing I need to do is brainstorm what will happen during the animation and present them to Andy so we can help put me on the right track.